


White Flag

by WroughtBetwixt



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Complicated - Freeform, Conflict of Interests, Emotional Baggage, Fluff, Foe Yay, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Love/Hate, Major Character Injury, Possessive Steve McGarrett, Spoilers, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-30
Updated: 2013-04-30
Packaged: 2017-12-10 00:45:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/779851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WroughtBetwixt/pseuds/WroughtBetwixt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes you need someone more than you'd ever want to admit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Flag

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for 3.21 ahead! ♥ Thanks for reading.

_I don't care._  
  
That's what Steve had told the talkshow host and her camera chumps when they asked him if he thought Wo Fat would make it. What else could he say? He'd needed five minutes to just sit and _think_ goddamnit, and he couldn't think with a camera stuck in his face. Luckily, Chin and the others had seen the look on his face and steered the camera crew away, distracting them with shiny objects and things they _wanted_ to hear. They didn't want to hear Steve's real answer... _they_ didn't care.  
  
Steve cared. Steve cared a lot.  
  
He thought that it should have given him some sense of triumph. All that he felt was a hollow, twisting ache somewhere inside of him, and some numb thing that might have been disbelief if he could look at his own emotions without wanting to vomit. The rest of Five-0 had watched him as he'd paced the hospital, looking more like a forlorn lover rather than someone's nemesis. That's what Danny had said before Steve had ordered them out, a crack to try and break the tension... typical Danny, but it hit a nerve that was more raw than it ever should have been. Exchanging glances, his team had filtered out of the hospital and left Steve to his own devices. Once they had left, Steve found it easier to sit and think, without people watching him with some weird mix of expectation and concern. Not concern because they worried if he was okay, but concern over the fact that he _wasn't_ okay. He _wasn't_ celebrating, he _wasn't_ victorious. But for the second time that day, Chin seemed to understand on a level Steve wasn't sure he himself understood.  
  
"Give me a call if you need someone to go up there with you," Chin had said, putting a hand on Steve's shoulder. "It's going to be okay."  
  
And then Chin was gone, the last one out, knowing what Steve was going to do before Steve even knew he was going to do it.  
  
Steve didn't know when he had stopped chasing Wo Fat out of anger; the man had done so much, hurt so many, that Steve knew he should have been a wall of white-hot fury and revenge. At some point, that had been true. Now? The rage was gone, the thirst for revenge had dried, and the hatred had withered to nothing. Steve didn't know what remained. He had looked down on Wo Fat, gun in hand, and all he'd felt was tired. Tired of being lied to by his own mother and girlfriend, tired of the confusion... incredibly and suffocatingly tired of everything and everyone. When Wo Fat met his eyes and told Steve to do it, to take the shot and end it, he didn't hear someone challenging him to take revenge-- all Steve heard was suffering, and someone equally as weary. He had tried to find the anger to do it, knowing no one would blame him, but he'd come up empty.  
  
There was a point when they stopped being cops and robbers, when they stopped being predator and prey, and they were both just men staring at each other with no idea what the fuck was what anymore. In the end, the monster he'd been chasing was a man, and laying there writhing in pain, that man looked a little too much like himself. Lowering his gun, Steve had stormed off and called the paramedics. It was the right thing to do, he told himself. True enough. If only he'd done it because it was the right thing to do, and not because sympathy had stomped out the one feeble, miserable scrap of vengeance that had survived.  
  
Great time for an existential crisis.  
  
Midnight came and went. Steve snapped awake in a chair around two in the morning, unaware that he'd fallen asleep. The TV in the waiting room still droned, and ER patients filed in and out... everything was so normal, and yet there was a tension in the air as nurses shuffled to and fro, pensive looks on their faces. Every so often one would glance at him, some of them giving him looks of admiration, some of pity... and a few that made Steve wonder how many people in the hospital Wo Fat had paid off. It was a bit much; Steve allowed himself to doze off once more, but no sooner had he slipped off than a hand on his shoulder jolted him back to consciousness.  
  
An older, grey-haired nurse, small and round with a soothing voice, smiled apologetically down at him. "Sorry to bother you, dear. I thought you'd want to know that the patient is in serious condition, but his vitals are stabilizing and he's been conscious. He's been moved into an ICU on the third floor."  
  
"Thank you," Steve replied. He hesitated for a heartbeat, questions spinning through his mind, but only one really mattering. "Is he going to make it?"  
  
"Well..." the nurse trailed off, raising a hand to the air in a gesture of helplessness. "That might be a better question for the doctor, I'm afraid. You know how these things are."  
  
He nodded and forced a smile. "Of course. Thanks again for updating me."  
  
Smiling again, the nurse turned and began to walk away. After a couple steps, she looked over her shoulder, and the smile softened into something that Steve couldn't quite identify. "You know, dear, if you want to go up..."  
  
The question tumbled out before Steve could really stop it. "Why would I?"  
  
"I've been a nurse for a very long time. If there's one thing I know from working in Chicago, it's that things like this have a way of getting personal. Sometimes in ways we don't understand."  
  
Steve wanted to answer, but the reply caught in his throat. Instead, he merely gave her another nod; the nurse wandered off, and Steve found himself sifting through magazines he'd already read three times. He could go home, go to bed like everyone else probably had... except Doris was at his house, and the idea of talking to her just then made him want to punch a wall. An hour clicked by, and Steve gave up on sleep. He stood, stretched and began to slowly pace along an empty, quieter hallway. The words of Chin and the nurse rolled about in his head, and despite the fact that he didn't want to give a shit, Steve found himself making his way to the elevator. The doors dinging opened sounded too much like a chastisement in his ears, but he stepped inside anyways. His finger hovered over the buttons; he hadn't eaten since lunch the day before, and it wasn't too late to just pay a visit to the vending machine on the lower level. Shaking his head, Steve pushed the '3' and closed his eyes as the doors slammed shut.  
  
The guards on the third floor nodded to him as the doors opened again. They were quietly mulling about, some of them playing card games, some of them texting on their phones. There were about ten guards, armed and clad in bullet-proof vests. Steve found himself wondering again how many of them could potentially be in Wo Fat's pockets, but all seemed well enough. The long hallway made Steve feel like he was doing a walk of shame, as if his being there at all betrayed the moral and psychological conflict he felt gnawing away at his mind. Still, his hand and voice was steady as he reached the door, pulling a fifty dollar bill from his pocket and holding it out to the single guard standing watch.  
  
"Go get you and your buddies something to eat from downstairs. I'm sure it's been a long night."  
  
The guard blinked, wary. "Sir?"  
  
Steve waved the money a bit. "I'm not going to do anything stupid. I just need a moment."  
  
After a pause, the guard took the money and walked away. The other guards, farther away, either didn't notice or didn't care. Steve took a breath and slipped into the room, a lamp in the corner offering more than enough light to see by. He almost wished there wasn't; the sight in front of him made Steve's stomach churn. Most of Wo Fat's upper body was wrapped in gauze, save for just a bit of the right side of his face. That hadn't escaped injury, either, but with the dirt and blood washed away, it at least didn't appear to be mangled. A tucked in blanket over the lower half of Wo Fat's body politely hid any other wounds, but Steve picked up the chart at the foot of the bed and noted that there had been trauma to the legs as well. Fractured left femur, shattered tibia, more burns. Third degree on roughly 40% of his body, some second degree burns...  
  
Steve raised his eyes to the machine in the corner, one of those fancy morphine drips one could use to self-dose. "Gave you the good stuff," he muttered, flipping through the chart some more. Prognosis, favorable. "You're going to need it."  
  
Setting the chart back down, Steve walked around towards the right side of the hospital bad, cautious as he rested a hand on the white sheets; yes, it was all real, though it still didn't quite feel that way. Wo Fat didn't stir, unconscious maybe, though possibly just sleeping. The morphine likely knocked the guy out; he was breathing on his own, and the doctor had chosen to avoid an induced coma. A good choice for avoiding long-term neurological damage, though infinitely more painful. Steve tried to summon up some sort of Schadenfreude, but like before, the only thing that managed to surface was a dull, half-hearted desire to throttle Wo Fat for causing more trouble for everyone else. _And it bit you in the ass this time, didn't it_ , Steve thought at his long-time enemy with a faint growl. Being reduced to a pathetic, humiliated and scorched mess seemed fitting punishment. Ironic... a nice dose of poetic justice. Far better than anything Steve could think to do, and at this point, Steve would have wanted to do.  
  
From the corner of his vision, Steve saw an eye blink.  
  
"Are you awake?" Steve asked, searching Wo Fat's face for any further movement. Nothing; there was no sign that the man had moved at all. Pulling up a chair, Steve sank into it and leaned back with a long sigh. He felt utterly stupid, but the lump of words in his throat needed to come out, or he felt like he'd choke. "I'm not here to gloat. I'm here to..." He paused, rubbing his face with his hands. "I don't even know. This isn't how I pictured this going down, but I guess it's just like you, to make it all melodramatic. Son of a bitch."  
  
Silence.  
  
"I wish I could hate you. I wish I could just walk away from this and let you suffer alone, like you deserve. But what the hell do I really know? First there's the Shelbourne mess, then some CIA bullshit and now my mother protecting you... Who are you, man?" Steve watched Wo Fat, almost hoping for some sort of reply. Almost. "I feel like I'm supposed to be Sherlock Holmes, putting this all together, but I'm not smart enough for this crap. I need answers, someone to let me know what game we're playing here. So, I guess you're my Moriarty in all this. I need you a lot more than I want to admit."  
  
Fingers twitched and curled, sinking into the bedsheets; Wo Fat's eyelid fluttered, but didn't open, and his breathing became a touch too rapid. Steve watched, waiting, but all that followed was a faint, low sound in the man's throat. He'd heard that sound before, recalling a dim memory of Mary's dog after the poor creature had been hit by a car. Letting out a small sigh, Steve reached over to the nearby machine and hit the button that would deliver a dose of morphine. Soon, the clenched fingers relaxed, and a long exhale accompanied the easing of breath. _Seems the feeling's going to be mutual,_ Steve mused as the knot in his own chest loosened by a thread. Looking up at the sound of footsteps, he could see the guard returning, and a wave of exhaustion settled on his shoulders like an all-too-heavy blanket as the hours of stress and sleep caught up to him. Time to go.  
  
He paused between the hospital bed and the door and glanced back to Wo Fat with narrowed eyes, his tone one of a man calling for a draw after a long battle. "Just don't die, alright?"  
  
Steve turned, walking out. He could have sworn he heard a whisper of a laugh from behind.


End file.
